Greater New Orleans

SUSAN POAG/ THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
Principal Yelitza Gray , hand in air,let out a whoop Monday, August 6, 2012 while visiting the site of her school that is currently under construction as the faculty at Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts took to the streets to remind parents about the start of school Thursday, August 9, 2012. Staff from Lincoln boarded a bus and travelled to Marrero neighborhoods where their students live and knocked on doors, introducing themselves in preparation for the upcoming 2012/13 school year.
(Susan Poag/The Times-Picayune)

When the current board took office in 2010, the project was revived, then tabled for several reasons; most recently, new board members said there was not enough money to fund an extra wing. The school was badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina and has since been rebuilt, but without the arts building. The construction cost the school district $16.4 million; the extra wing would have raised the price to about $18 million.

On Tuesday, members Mike Delesdernier, Larry Dale, Mark Jacobs and Pat Tovrea voted against funding the wing, which will cost the system an estimated $2.1 million. Members Etta Licciardi, Mark Morgan, Sandy Denapolis-Bosarge, Ray St. Pierre and Cedric Floyd supported the project. The board will still have to vote on a building plan once school officials bid out the project again.

"The previous board set up enough funding to have the school have an arts wing," Floyd said. "But the first project this board decided not to fund was the Lincoln school. Lincoln is overcrowded now, and when it comes down to arts, music, drama and dance, they have taken classroom space that's needed for these programs."

Floyd claimed that since January 2011 when the new board took office, more than $16 million in funds that had been budgeted to go partially toward the Lincoln arts wing had been redirected to other projects.

Teacher union President Meladie Munch cautioned the board against neglecting to follow through on Lincoln's arts wing, saying that under the Dandridge desegregation order, which the system settled in 2011, the school system is required to give West Bank and east bank students equal opportunities to an arts program. When Lincoln Elementary was initially rebuilt and billed as an arts school, it was supposed to be the West Bank equivalent to Clancy-Maggiore Elementary in Kenner.

"When we had the groundbreaking ceremony, that community was so hopeful and optimistic, and that was just snatched away," Munch said.

Margie Zeno, head of the Dandridge task force, said the plaintiffs of the Dandridge case have recently gone into remediation with the School Board's attorney on several issues they felt the system was violating with respect to the desegregation order. She said she would not go into details, but that the lack of an arts wing at Lincoln was one of the plaintiff's complaints.